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Keeping Cool May Be the Key To Longevity

Posted by Zonk on Fri Nov 03, 2006 03:14 PM
from the everybody-be-cool-you-be-cool dept.
Biotech Science
merryprankster writes "New Scientist reports that Scripps Research Institute scientists have found that lowering the body temperature of mice by just 0.5C extends their lifespan by around 15%. Until now the only proven way of increasing longevity has been calorie restriction — but as this also causes a lowering of body temperature the researchers speculate that this cooling may be the underlying mechanism retarding aging. In this study mice with a defect in their lateral hypothalamus, which has the side effect of cooling body temperature, not only lived longer but also ate normal amounts."
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  • Sweet! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Aadain2001 (684036) on Friday November 03 2006, @03:16PM (#16707981) Journal
    Alaska, here I come!
    • Despite the title, and all the comments talking about living in a low-temperature environment, I hope people realise that turning down the thermostat or moving to Alaska is not going to make a difference.

      I'm sure most people remember, but just in case, internal body temperature is carefully regulated by your brain, and won't change unless you catch a fever, or start freezing, in which case you have other problems to worry about.

      As for the results of this study, lab mice are not humans, and correlation does
      • Eh, I wouldn't necessarily say that it would have some negative effect on chances of survival. Remember, it only has to do with living long enough to have lots of babies. After that, you don't really matter to evolution.

        Also, keep in mind that we have plenty of former defense mechanisms (storing lots of excess energy as fat, anyone?) that aren't very useful to us now.

        • Re:Confusing title (Score:5, Interesting)

          by radtea (464814) on Friday November 03 2006, @04:11PM (#16708819)
          Remember, it only has to do with living long enough to have lots of babies. After that, you don't really matter to evolution.

          That is probably not true for humans.

          Humans are creatures of culture: accumulated, collectively held knowledge. The people who transmit culture are elders--in modern society, grandparents. They remember how they raised you, and when you have kids they provide guidance that effectively transmits traditions, habits and beliefs across generations. You, on the other hand, don't remember how you were raised, certainly not at a very early age.

          This may explain why humans live twice as long as they "should". One way of normalizing lifespan across species is to measure it in heartbeats. All mammals except humans live about one billion heartbeats. The range is around 0.7 to 1.1 billion. Humans live over two billion heartbeats, far outside the range of all other mammals. One plausible reason for this is that human groups that had more elders were more effectively able to accumulate knowledge across generations, and therefore were more successful. Not everyone would have to survive into old age to make this effective, but everyone would have to have the capacity to survive into old age to make it likely that a few members of each generation would.

          Ergo, until mouse model results are proven in humans--which so far as I know CR etc has not been--they are interesting, but not nearly so promising as one might naively think. We may already be so heavily optimized for long life that the simple tricks that work well for other species are considerably less effective for us.

        • After that, you don't really matter to evolution.

          Untrue. We are social creatures. There is strong evidence to suggest that having grandparents around turned out to be a huge advantage to humans. By having experience in the society, parenting improved., and shared child rearing improved survival rates.

          Parent post is an example of way oversimplified evolutionary theory.

        • Actually, we store excess fat and carbohydrates as fat. We don't get energy until we convert 'em to glucose (or ketones!) and then burn them. If we would back off on the carbohydrates, and most importantly stop eating more calories than we burn while we sit on our asses, then we wouldn't get fat.

          Besides, the ability to store energy is still potentially useful when civilization crashes due to the time_t bug :)

          Seriously though, the thing that's not helping us today isn't that we store fat - that's stil

        • After that, you don't really matter to evolution.

          I've heard people post this before, and it's really a bizarre notion. And easily proven wrong -- I have two groups of people. One group evolves the behavior that anyone over child-bearing age gets a overwheming desire to sacrifice their life at any cost to protect a child. The other group evolves a behavior that once you get beyond child-bearing age, you have an overwhelming desire to kill children. Which group is going thrive better? By your logic, it sh

          • How about when anyone past child-bearing age gets an overwhelming desire to tell you how you're getting fat, how well your siblings are doing compared to you and how you married the wrong person?

    • Alaska, here I come!

      That seems to be working for Ted 'Internet Tubes' Stevens.
      That guy is seriously old.

      • It's not like we know what part of the body it applies to. Maybe it's brain temperature. Or maybe it's pituitary gland temperature.

        Personally I run hot no matter what but the only time I'm not uncomfortable is when I'm in a cool environment. Since I'm hot all the time, I guess I'm going to die young :( On the plus side it's a good excuse to drive like a maniac. "Sorry honey, I know you hate hearing about how fast I drive on the way to and from work, but since I generate so much heat I'm dying young anyh

  • Thermostat (Score:4, Funny)

    by Apocalypse111 (597674) on Friday November 03 2006, @03:18PM (#16707997) Journal
    So when my dad kept yelling at me not to touch the thermostat, to keep it at 60 degrees, he was really trying to help me live longer?

    Thanks Dad!
    • Wait, so does this mean that when Grandma keeps the thermostat at 150F at the nursing home, she's actually trying to kill herself? WHY GRANDMA, WHY?
      • No, she only turns it up when you're around. She can't afford to keep giving you holiday presents on her fixed income, and decided the best solution was to remove you from the picture. For your own safety, I suggest you bribe the nursing staff to put her on heavy sedatives, and get her an electric blanket on her next birthday - that way she'll be too sleepy and comfortable to resume plotting your demise, and you will have effectively turned the tables on the murderous old bag. Old people try to do these
  • Then with global warming, we'd be truly screwed, eh?
  • It did extend the life by 12-20%, but what will happen in case there is an infection?
    Wouldnt this force us to have relatively poor immunity to diseases ?
    In the end, would this even out?
    • Last I checked, that's what fevers were for.
    • As a close friend with a degree in Foods and Nutrition points out:

      The rodent calorie-restriction longevity increase only shows up in laboratory settings, where the rodents are protected from exposure to infectious agents. When they are allowed such exposure, they prove to be much more susceptable to them, becoming ill more easily and dying form it ditto. So calorie restriction in ordinary environments REDUCES lifespan from this effect alone (i.e. not counting competitive disadvantages of underfeeding).

      Low
      • So now we need to compare experimental scientists on a calorie-restricted diet with theoretical scientists. If the experimental scientists live longer we know that it's because they eat fewer calories AND spend most of their time in a lab, and that the rest of us need to do more lab time.

      • It's true that cold doesn't cause infections, and a lot of research suggests that it doesn't even help "catching" infections. The idea that being out in the cold will cause you to get colds is pretty much bunk. If being cold manages to cause significant congestion or inflammation, the congestion or inflammation can become a good breading ground for bacteria. Now, I'm not a doctor, but this is what I've heard from various sources, including doctors.

        However, I've also read that the human immune system wor

        • We have fevers when we're sick because the organisms that cause that reaction in us are more fragile than we are, and they die at a lower temperature. A fever is your body's attempt to cook whatever's eating you. Or at least, that's my understanding.
  • Global warming is bad for your health.

  • Ice cream! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Friday November 03 2006, @03:22PM (#16708069) Homepage Journal
    Excuse me, I'm off to 31 Flavors. My very life depends on it!
    • Excuse me, I'm off to 31 Flavors. My very life depends on it!

      Actually, I remember seeing something on TV once (was it on Supersize Me?) that the founders of Baskin Robbins died young of heart disease... explain that one science!
  • The glorious Air Conditioner!

  • They ran commercials years ago showing people from the frigid north somewhere (Russia maybe)? eating Dannon yogurt and living to 100 years old.

    This is nothing new.
    • I think those people lived that long because of low stress not because they fed little or shivered in the cold.
  • Live 80 years or so compfortable and warm, than freezing for 90 years or so!
    This is a line from the computergame Aqua Nox.
  • So when people complain that I'm weird for liking a data center cold enough in which to hang meat, I'll have the last laugh? Enjoy your warm, short life in those cozy, tropical getaways, suckers! I'll be here configuring a new web appliance in one of my racks, freezing my ass off and barely able to type with my cold, stiff hands. Hah! I win!
  • Huh, I thought those guys in the server room looked a bit young for their age...

  • Let's see... .5C for 15% extension of life... so 150C decrease in temperature should yeild a 3000% extension....

    Freeze me!

  • I for one welcome our 15% longer living, micro-cryo-frozen mutantmice!

  • This has been discussed many times with the folk-science of elders in colder climates around the world for centuries. If the landscape wasn't violent as well as cold, people up North just seem to live longer.

  • While it's great that this research was carried out and has provided some reasoning behind caloric restriction, it's not a very shocking finding at all. The aging process is just a series of chemical reactions, some that we understand, some that we do not. Most organic reactions are slowed down significantly by relatively small decreases in ambient energy (lowering temp). Hence aging process should be expected to slow down as well.
  • So, if your woman is frigid, will she live longer?
  • ...will we live longer? No, really! I have a bodytemp that's about 36.5 C / 97.7 F.

    Not so cool otherwise I guess.
    • I was kind of thinking the opposite for myself. I have a high metabolism and thus a high body temp. Plus I live in Texas. Guess I'm screwed.

  • of course! (Score:4, Funny)

    by GrumpySimon (707671) <email@NosPAm.simon.net.nz> on Friday November 03 2006, @03:35PM (#16708309) Homepage
    The Fonz will NEVER die!

    Oh, wrong 'cool'. My bad.
  • My body temp is usually a little high, around 99 f. Nice knowing you guys.
  • So looks like the UK Govt has an excuse to stop paying winter fuel top-ups to OAPs then.
  • As a member of the calorie restriction society I have one thing to say:

    Ohhhh my god give me a sandwich!

  • Don't Get It Backwards (Score:5, Informative)

    by kthejoker (931838) on Friday November 03 2006, @04:29PM (#16709107)
    Lest we be fooled, lowering your body temperature as a warm-blooded person is impossible. What the researchers actually did was artificially inject a protein that when unfolding generated higher amounts of heat than normal proteins into the hypothalamus. This tricked the mouse's brain into lowering its internal thermostat.

    This is more like holding a match to a thermometer which can trigger a fire alarm. It's fooling a local sensor to simulate a global sensation.

    So you can't eat ice cream, or live in Antarctica, or whatever to fool it. You have to trick your brain. Even better, at this tricked out brain level, you need less calories to survive because your brain doesn't turn on its "must store fat" warning level as quickly. So this might be a good cure for obesity in the future.

    But seriously, how cool is it that they can use a heat-generating protein to trick a mouse's brain? I love how neurology proves how gullible we are.
    • It's the other way around. You better keep the heat in you computer and processor instead of having it blown into your room!

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